1700s trend: Yellow

In the 18th century, an influx of imported Far Eastern arts to Europe created a fashion for chinoiserie (Chinese-influenced design) and the color yellow, an auspicious hue the Chinese associated with the emperor. Previously used by the Catholic church to mark heretics, the sunny tone was reinvented in European courts as a symbol of power, wealth and stylishness (also true if you were wearing it in spring 2013).

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Photograph: Courtesy Museum at FIT/Eileen Costa

Tartan silk dress, circa 1812, Scotland

1800s trend: Tartan

Waverley and other 19th-century novels by Sir Walter Scott piqued an interest in Scottish culture on both sides of the Atlantic. Once the British royals got on board with the print (originated by Highland clans), its favor was secured. King George IV adopted it as his official dress after an 1822 visit to Scotland, and in 1856, Queen Victoria had her Scottish estate house, Balmoral Castle, fitted out with tartan upholstery, curtains and carpet.

1930s trend: Glamour

During the Depression, people escaped wholeheartedly into the glam world of Hollywood, taking their style cues from screen sirens like Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford. The starlets didn’t wear elegant, bias-cut floor-length frocks just for show—their costume designers realized that a shimmery, rhinestone-studded silk-satin gown like this one would contrast well against a dark background (or a man’s suit) in black-and-white films.

1960s trend: Exoticism

Modern long-haul air travel is a singularly heinous ordeal, but in the swinging ’60s it was a romantic pastime reserved for the jet set. As part of the exhibit, a clip from HBO documentary In Vogue: The Editor’s Eye explains the magazine’s initiative under then–editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland to utilize far-flung locales for fashion shoots. On display nearby is a foreign-flavored vestment plucked from Vreeland’s own wardrobe: a burnt-orange Oscar de la Renta kaftan.

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The Museum at FIT examines the phenomenon of fashion crazes from industry developments that sped up the cycle, to the variety of sources that have given rise to trends in the past 250 years. Investigate the Depression-era obsession with glamour, the exoticism of the swinging ’60s, the mid-19th-century tartan vogue and other hot new looks of old.